I’m speaking at and helped organize a conference on labor journalism: covering labor and the labor of journalism, May 2, 202410:00am-7:00pm at Rutgers University.
On the heels of the pandemic, the US has witnessed one of the most vibrant and militant phases of labor organizing in the last 50 years. New unionizing campaigns at companies like Amazon and Starbucks have sprung up amid a massive uptick in strikes across the country from UPS workers and airline pilots, to academic workers and both actors and writers in the film industry. This cycle of labor militancy is crowned by the UAW’s successful “stand-up strike” in the fall of 2023, which is redefining the auto industry and could be a launchpad for rebuilding the power of the labor movement.
This new movement of workplace militancy demands a labor press that keeps pace. Over recent decades however, many outlets all but abandoned the labor and workplace beat, and labor reporting is either covered by independent journalists or on the fringes of many of the newspapers of record. At this MIC-sponsored symposium, we will explore the way this wave of worker militancy has been covered and strategies for rebuilding the labor beat.
It’s free and open to the public; full schedule and speaker list here as well as RSVP.
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